BluVeinThrobber:Watubi: I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance policies and feel every incident should be handled on a case-by-case basis. But, this kid took his finger to the back of another kid's head and pretended to blow his head off. The other kid was not playing along. None of you think that's a little bit odd for a 10 year old and needed to be addressed? Wow

Another thing while I'm here...teachers are the last ones who want to cause a fuss, especially when dealing with parents or punishments. For every zero tolerance article that enrages you, there are probably 1000 cases that were handled by the teacher and the kid wasn't sent up the creek, so to speak. Since everyone here LOVES to speculate, I'm going to assume this wasn't the kid's first time at the shoot 'em up rodeo. I'm willing to bet he in an unruly student and the teacher turned him in as a last resort.

Last thing, if I came up behind you and pointed my finger at your head and said "bang". What would you do to me?

Watubi:I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance policies and feel every incident should be handled on a case-by-case basis. But, this kid took his finger to the back of another kid's head and pretended to blow his head off. The other kid was not playing along. None of you think that's a little bit odd for a 10 year old and needed to be addressed? Wow

Another thing while I'm here...teachers are the last ones who want to cause a fuss, especially when dealing with parents or punishments. For every zero tolerance article that enrages you, there are probably 1000 cases that were handled by the teacher and the kid wasn't sent up the creek, so to speak. Since everyone here LOVES to speculate, I'm going to assume this wasn't the kid's first time at the shoot 'em up rodeo. I'm willing to bet he in an unruly student and the teacher turned him in as a last resort.

Last thing, if I came up behind you and pointed my finger at your head and said "bang". What would you do to me?

I would pretend to be shot. And then later I would pretend to shoot you. Because I have a sense of humor.

School shootings that left scores of dead children and the resulting national headlines forced schools to adopt gun-related policies. Part of those policies include early identification of violent or potentially violent students BEFORE any actual problems arise. We have insisted that schools hire resource officers to police school rooms and assemblies. These policies, should ideally include common sense enforcement and fairness. Something that on the surface seems to be lacking in this case.

We penalize high school and college football players for making a throat slashing sign even though there is no knife or razor on the field. If an older student were to threaten another student with a verbal threat of violence, he would likewise face punishment. How young is TOO young? I remember, like many of you running around the playground AND occasionally even the classroom pretending to play cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers or war games. It is a piss poor reflection of the society that we have either created or allowed to be created. The line between a harmless prank and an actual threat can be blurred.

All my nephews and some of my nieces have been taught gun safety and responsibility. My wife and I have 32 total, but no kids of our own. I've stressed for them to be safe and legal marksmen and hunters. We have a large duck and deer camp, and shoot pistols, rifles and shotguns.

The world is bigger and uglier then when we were kids. School shootings went from being a rare threat to a regular tragedy. I don't think this is all about anti-gun sentiment. I don't think that has anything to do with 'political correctness'. I hope each case like this would be handled on an individual basis. A 'zero tolerance' policy seems every bit as unwise as mandatory sentencing guidelines for youthful offenders.

This story makes me sad. Sad, for school shootings. Sad, because innocent children are paying the price for the actions of both the mentally damaged and the students whose hearts are dark with rage and hate.As much as I am disappointed in hearing of this ten year old's case, I am equally disappointed and angry that some find this to be the only solution.

We praise stupidity. We worship money, success and power. We scorn kindness as weakness and we are manipulated by consumerism, greed and violence. We have substituted brotherly love, for division. We have replaced morals and religion for politics and blame. We have allowed monied interests to dictate our habits and futures. We have either forgotten what creates happiness, or were never given the love and understanding to be able to appreciate it.

I claim no moral highground. I am cynical, dark humored and often inappropriate... especially on FARK. I always want to think the best of everyone, but inevitably I end up disappointed. I wish we all spent more time playing nice and sharing. Feel free to chastise me or remind me, when I do not. Let's all try to do a better job with one another's help.

gja:BluVeinThrobber: Watubi: I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance policies and feel every incident should be handled on a case-by-case basis. But, this kid took his finger to the back of another kid's head and pretended to blow his head off. The other kid was not playing along. None of you think that's a little bit odd for a 10 year old and needed to be addressed? Wow

Another thing while I'm here...teachers are the last ones who want to cause a fuss, especially when dealing with parents or punishments. For every zero tolerance article that enrages you, there are probably 1000 cases that were handled by the teacher and the kid wasn't sent up the creek, so to speak. Since everyone here LOVES to speculate, I'm going to assume this wasn't the kid's first time at the shoot 'em up rodeo. I'm willing to bet he in an unruly student and the teacher turned him in as a last resort.

Last thing, if I came up behind you and pointed my finger at your head and said "bang". What would you do to me?

BluVeinThrobber:gja: BluVeinThrobber: Watubi: I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance policies and feel every incident should be handled on a case-by-case basis. But, this kid took his finger to the back of another kid's head and pretended to blow his head off. The other kid was not playing along. None of you think that's a little bit odd for a 10 year old and needed to be addressed? Wow

Another thing while I'm here...teachers are the last ones who want to cause a fuss, especially when dealing with parents or punishments. For every zero tolerance article that enrages you, there are probably 1000 cases that were handled by the teacher and the kid wasn't sent up the creek, so to speak. Since everyone here LOVES to speculate, I'm going to assume this wasn't the kid's first time at the shoot 'em up rodeo. I'm willing to bet he in an unruly student and the teacher turned him in as a last resort.

Last thing, if I came up behind you and pointed my finger at your head and said "bang". What would you do to me?

gja:BluVeinThrobber: gja: BluVeinThrobber: Watubi: I'm not a supporter of zero tolerance policies and feel every incident should be handled on a case-by-case basis. But, this kid took his finger to the back of another kid's head and pretended to blow his head off. The other kid was not playing along. None of you think that's a little bit odd for a 10 year old and needed to be addressed? Wow

Another thing while I'm here...teachers are the last ones who want to cause a fuss, especially when dealing with parents or punishments. For every zero tolerance article that enrages you, there are probably 1000 cases that were handled by the teacher and the kid wasn't sent up the creek, so to speak. Since everyone here LOVES to speculate, I'm going to assume this wasn't the kid's first time at the shoot 'em up rodeo. I'm willing to bet he in an unruly student and the teacher turned him in as a last resort.

Last thing, if I came up behind you and pointed my finger at your head and said "bang". What would you do to me?

Mass killings are down. Waaaaay down. They're also more frowned upon. Used to be fun for the comanche? (I think) to tie up white settlers and let their women torture them. Cut off noses, burn them, etc. Fun for the whole family. The US Cavalry troops we sent against them, led by men like Custer, weren't much better. I don't have specific examples for Custer, but the Trail of Tears and smallpox blankets come to mind as the kind of things that were gotten up to. And that's just the 1800s.

You wanna get more recent? 1940's recent enough? Viet Nam? Iraq? No, we're a much less violent society than in the past. Things are great. The only real problem left is the legal system.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the schoolWe're torturing the teachers and we're breaking all the rulesWe broke into the office and we hung the principalThe kids go marching homeGlory, glory hallelujahTeacher hit me with a rulerI met her at the door with a loaded .44and the teacher ain't my teacher no more.

I went to grade school in the early 90s. We used to sing this (or variants of it) on the playground. I'm certain older farkers did too. Today, I'm 100% certain it'd get a kid suspended or expelled.

I ALSO think it's stupid to whine about the punishment after being warned & reminded of the consequences and choosing to ignore that.

The rule is offensive, arbitrary, ignorant, oppressive and wasteful of time, money, effort and already overextended attention on the part of teachers who already have far too much to do and get too little pay for it.

Somewhere along the line these things have to start being fought. Otherwise our schools will continue to have problems they could easily avoid, on top of the inherently unavoidable problems they have to deal with.

So, if some whining and teeth-gnashing helps this along I say "so be it". Anything that gets stupid-ass rules like this bad press ad helps to force them off the books is good, IMHO. We need to stop being the pussies of the developed world.

Gordon Bennett:"How much of a threat can it really be for a 10-year-old to hold up his fingers?" said a frustrated Entingh. "I would like for somebody to explain this to me because apparently I don't get it. This is way over the boundary. A teacher could have talked to him and sat him down, given him detention, but a three days suspension?"

This is what happens when extremism becomes normalised. Giving him a stern lecture or a detention is not a just, fair or rational response yet that is taken as some sort of moderate or sane position simply for being less extreme.

What would be sane would be for this to have been a complete non-issue and for no one to have batted an eye at a child making a gun shape with his fingers and saying "bang."

Guns seems to be the only subject on which liberals think that complete and utter ignorance and deception is a good thing. Of coarse if they can keep the kids as ignorant as possible about guns the better the chances of accidents that they can blame on gun owners and scream and cry for more bans.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes." "We have to be repetitive about this," he said. "We need to do this every day of the week, and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way." -Eric Holder

grinding_journalist:Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the schoolWe're torturing the teachers and we're breaking all the rulesWe broke into the office and we hung the principalThe kids go marching homeGlory, glory hallelujahTeacher hit me with a rulerI met her at the door with a loaded .44and the teacher ain't my teacher no more.

I went to grade school in the early 90s. We used to sing this (or variants of it) on the playground. I'm certain older farkers did too. Today, I'm 100% certain it'd get a kid suspended or expelled.

/i will teach this song to my son

Oh my god, yes.

You'd be sweating it out in Gitmo in half a day, if you weren't just put against the nearest wall.

Callous:Gordon Bennett: "How much of a threat can it really be for a 10-year-old to hold up his fingers?" said a frustrated Entingh. "I would like for somebody to explain this to me because apparently I don't get it. This is way over the boundary. A teacher could have talked to him and sat him down, given him detention, but a three days suspension?"

This is what happens when extremism becomes normalised. Giving him a stern lecture or a detention is not a just, fair or rational response yet that is taken as some sort of moderate or sane position simply for being less extreme.

What would be sane would be for this to have been a complete non-issue and for no one to have batted an eye at a child making a gun shape with his fingers and saying "bang."

Guns seems to be the only subject on which liberals think that complete and utter ignorance and deception is a good thing. Of coarse if they can keep the kids as ignorant as possible about guns the better the chances of accidents that they can blame on gun owners and scream and cry for more bans.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes." "We have to be repetitive about this," he said. "We need to do this every day of the week, and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way." -Eric Holder

Cannot wait to see that asshole thrown out. I hope he knows the second BO out his wimpy little ass is out.

I hate to say it, but that's a pretty effective way of getting the point across to kids that the shiny show-n-tell special is NOT something you should bring to school.... no matter how many times your drunk dad packed a piece in your backpack and a banana in his holster.

It actually a real problem, all the more so with lax gun laws. If you want one, don't be surprised at the other, at least. It is a building full of irreplaceable stuff after all.

sobriquet by any other name:I hate to say it, but that's a pretty effective way of getting the point across to kids that the shiny show-n-tell special is NOT something you should bring to school.... no matter how many times your drunk dad packed a piece in your backpack and a banana in his holster.

It actually a real problem, all the more so with lax gun laws. If you want one, don't be surprised at the other, at least. It is a building full of irreplaceable stuff after all.

Can you try and come up with something even remotely true? That's an awful lot of words used to express "I have no clue what I'm talking about".

sobriquet by any other name:I hate to say it, but that's a pretty effective way of getting the point across to kids that the shiny show-n-tell special is NOT something you should bring to school.... no matter how many times your drunk dad packed a piece in your backpack and a banana in his holster.

It actually a real problem, all the more so with lax gun laws. If you want one, don't be surprised at the other, at least. It is a building full of irreplaceable stuff after all.

Gecko Gingrich:Relatively Obscure: They can send out notes saying "any and all child-like behavior from children will not be tolerated," but people will probably still be annoyed when kids kicked out of school for it.

I don't think I want to know a six-year-old who isn't a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don't want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don't have a college degree. I don't even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they're ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they're no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I'm coming looking for you!

Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! Good day to you, madam.

Kids aren't allowed to say the F word in class. Does it happen? yes. Are there consequences? yes. Is it excusable because kids have no self control and are therefore inherently free from responsibility for their actions? no.

Sin_City_Superhero:SH: Sin_City_Superhero: Entingh said he never received a notice, but was aware of school authorities telling students, including Nathan, that any gun-related behavior would have serious consequences.

Your kid was warned. You knew about your kid being warned. Yet you act all surprised that your kid got suspended? No sympathy.

^^^^^ Whatta dick.

Yeah. It is pretty nice. How'd YOU hear about it...from your mom?

A dick and an asshole, all in one. Magic!

Boo_Guy:That Guy...From That Show!: So, this is still cool in school right?

Carousel Beast:sobriquet by any other name: I hate to say it, but that's a pretty effective way of getting the point across to kids that the shiny show-n-tell special is NOT something you should bring to school.... no matter how many times your drunk dad packed a piece in your backpack and a banana in his holster.

It actually a real problem, all the more so with lax gun laws. If you want one, don't be surprised at the other, at least. It is a building full of irreplaceable stuff after all.

That's a whole lot of derp right there.

sure *I* believe you, but can you help phrase it for conveying to the Parent-Teachers Association why it's bad? No foul language and under a minute, if you don't mind.

Kumana Wanalaia:Kids aren't allowed to say the F word in class. Does it happen? yes. Are there consequences? yes. Is it excusable because kids have no self control and are therefore inherently free from responsibility for their actions? no.

Two words:FalseEquivalencies

One is a filthy word with a near universal connotation.The other is a playtime gesture.

Those rules are idiotic, you have teachers and administrators sending notes home about a "problem" at school where kids are fake shooting eachother with their fingers? this is what they are doing on the taxpayer dime? And just because a policy exists doesn't mean you have to follow it either, there's plenty of plausible deniability that you didn't see a kid making his finger into a gun that as a teacher you can ignore it and just focus on the general disruption the kid is making, so it's douchebags all the way down on this one.

I ALSO think it's stupid to whine about the punishment after being warned & reminded of the consequences and choosing to ignore that.

The rule is offensive, arbitrary, ignorant, oppressive and wasteful of time, money, effort and already overextended attention on the part of teachers who already have far too much to do and get too little pay for it.

Somewhere along the line these things have to start being fought. Otherwise our schools will continue to have problems they could easily avoid, on top of the inherently unavoidable problems they have to deal with.

So, if some whining and teeth-gnashing helps this along I say "so be it". Anything that gets stupid-ass rules like this bad press ad helps to force them off the books is good, IMHO. We need to stop being the pussies of the developed world.

OK. Let's look at this from a different perspective. Say the teacher had done nothing, and some other kid tells his/her parents. That parent files a complaint, and the teacher gets fired for neglecting their job. The root problem is that a stupid rule is on the books. But the fact is, the rule IS on the books, and the kid put the teacher in an unenviable position. The kid was warned. The parent acknowledges this. He also acknowledges that the teacher reminded the students of the penalties of non-compliance. When the kid willfully ignores the teacher, what's the teacher to do? The teacher has NO CHOICE but to suspend. If not, none of the teacher's other orders carry any weight, and chaos reigns in the classroom.

I ALSO think it's stupid to whine about the punishment after being warned & reminded of the consequences and choosing to ignore that.

The rule is offensive, arbitrary, ignorant, oppressive and wasteful of time, money, effort and already overextended attention on the part of teachers who already have far too much to do and get too little pay for it.

Somewhere along the line these things have to start being fought. Otherwise our schools will continue to have problems they could easily avoid, on top of the inherently unavoidable problems they have to deal with.

So, if some whining and teeth-gnashing helps this along I say "so be it". Anything that gets stupid-ass rules like this bad press ad helps to force them off the books is good, IMHO. We need to stop being the pussies of the developed world.

OK. Let's look at this from a different perspective. Say the teacher had done nothing, and some other kid tells his/her parents. That parent files a complaint, and the teacher gets fired for neglecting their job. The root problem is that a stupid rule is on the books. But the fact is, the rule IS on the books, and the kid put the teacher in an unenviable position. The kid was warned. The parent acknowledges this. He also acknowledges that the teacher reminded the students of the penalties of non-compliance. When the kid willfully ignores the teacher, what's the teacher to do? The teacher has NO CHOICE but to suspend. If not, none of the teacher's other orders carry any weight, and chaos reigns in the classroom.

I did not say to do nothing. My eldest sister is a teacher. They foisted some of these stupidity-laden rules on the staff where she is.The teachers DID have complaints from parents. The teachers stood up to it and forced the hand of the board.Now, they have rules that make much more sense. And parents were reminded that teachers are not there to raise your sperm/egg combos.That's why it's called PARENTING.

gja:Kumana Wanalaia: Kids aren't allowed to say the F word in class. Does it happen? yes. Are there consequences? yes. Is it excusable because kids have no self control and are therefore inherently free from responsibility for their actions? no.

Two words:FalseEquivalencies

One is a filthy word with a near universal connotation.The other is a playtime gesture.

They're both things that adults have told the children not to do.The fact that one is vulgarity and the other is pretend violence doesn't mitigate the prohibition.

The question I really want an answer to is: What's a Level 1 simulated firearm if you can reach "level two" without holding anything.

When I was a kid "simulated firearm" meant you took a TOY firearm (notice the distinction) and removed the bright orange bits so it wasn't obviously fake, and/or deliberately convinced someone you had a real weapon.

Adults have guns. Most of the US seems to want more of them to have guns. Kids model adult behavior in play. They do so in a childish and unrealistic fashion because they're children. Redirecting them to another game, and then explaining WHY something is inappropriate if they do it again makes a lot more sense than zomgthinkofthechildrensuspension.

Kumana Wanalaia:gja: Kumana Wanalaia: Kids aren't allowed to say the F word in class. Does it happen? yes. Are there consequences? yes. Is it excusable because kids have no self control and are therefore inherently free from responsibility for their actions? no.

Two words:FalseEquivalencies

One is a filthy word with a near universal connotation.The other is a playtime gesture.

They're both things that adults have told the children not to do.The fact that one is vulgarity and the other is pretend violence doesn't mitigate the prohibition.

If "but it was fun" becomes an excuse, that's a problem.

Again we come to "listen unquestioningly to all you are dictated".Screw that. And screw anyone who pulls such assholishness.

Just because children are told to listen to adults does not give adults a pass on using intelligent limits and not going totally of the deep end with rules. And that is the crux of the matter. there rules are too much, too far, with too little thought behind them.They embody the lazy useless thinking that has permeated this country. Why think when it can all be made laws and rules for you to obey.For-shiat laziness.